Bear in my back yard

Village Vixen

Village Vixen

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So. I have this wee problem. I have a bear that comes and goes from my backyard. He is in the garbage, he has crashed down my fence in 3 places and he has been on top of my sheds. :mad:

I called the conservation office about 2 weeks and they said they aren't going to do anything. Today I noticed a new street sign up about 15 houses from mine that says something like "You are in bear country." I suppose given the circumstances the sign is accurate. :p

I live in a bedrom community outside Vancouver. 30K population. The city delivered bear feeders around that they called "rot pots" for kitchen compost. I don't use mine but some of the neighbours do. Personally I think that they are bait for the bear(s).

How do I get rid of it??


VV
 
Well, I do get along well with the neighbours. I gave away lots of eggs when I had then chickens. So well yes. I can't shoot it either. I wanna keep my guns. ;)

What do you propose? Short of shooting it, how bad is the solution going to frost off my neighbours?? Not that they want it around any more than I do.

VV
 
Crack flares are worth a try. You can get a good quality centrefire pen launcher and crack flares from Deakin Equipment in Vancouver.

Practice with them before you use them on a bear. Don't aim them at the bear but rather off to either side of him. If you launch a crack flare at the bear you may overshoot him, the flare will explode behind him and he may run towards you.
 
I like that idea about the electric fence.

I have never actually seen the bear so I am not sure about how lucky I will be with the crack flares. The folks behind and beside have seen it several times, but I just find the bear piles everywhere. I will look into those too.

Thanks guys.

VV
 
electric fence doesn't work when i worked on a guest ranch in northern sask i was for ever fixing the electric fence that bears would just walk through. my shooting coach used to live in down town nanaimo and had the same problem his daughter was about 2 at the the time his wife told the co's that she had a child and there were plenty running around the neighbourhood and to get a trap out there or she would shoot it next time she saw it and the co's had a trap out there the next day. apparently this bear used their backyard as a highway untill the trap was placed, they never saw the bear again, i would guess it ahd been caught before and learnt its leason on traps.
 
Village Vixen said:
... he has crashed down my fence in 3 places and he has been on top of my sheds. :mad:
...VV
Click to expand...

E-mail your CO and lay down all the facts, including pictures of the damaged property. Ask CO to provide an address so you (or your lawyer) can send the invoice for repairs/replacement of damaged property.
See what happens next.

"I called the conservation office about 2 weeks and they said they aren't going to do anything" = Verba volant, scripta manent!
 
lots of bears where i live. before the lama's moved in next door they always used to come right up to the house sniffin around for something to eat. because the couple next door has a young child the co would come out and get rid of them. just call him say its a threat and something must be done about it. the trick seems to be to sound upset lol
 
Village Vixen said:
...I live in a bedrom community outside Vancouver. 30K population....
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're out in Mission as well. I've had a big blackie around here a couple of times in the last two weeks. Hit the garbage can and tore down two bird feeders- one a $50 "squirrel-proof" feeder. I guess the next project is to weld up a bear-proof cage for the garbage bin. So far he (?) hasn't discovered the alpacas and llamas next door. If it gets into those it can be shot, but not otherwise. I had to do this a couple of years ago and came up with a plaque when we buried it:

Bear grave label.JPG


As the sign says, this was a bear that had been caught as a cub, tagged and relocated.

My neighbours had the CO out a couple of times to deal with bears getting into the animals. He tried unsucessfully to trap one, ended up shooting another. (Sad, it was just a cub.)

If it is destroying property, I would think that the CO ought to be responsible for dealing with it. Maybe if you threaten to shoot it, they will change their mind (!) Likely you're not the only one in the area with this problem.

"dudu"s suggestion is a good one. I think I have the CO's e-mail address from the incident I mentioned above and will PM it to you.

:) Stuart
 
warrenb said:
What are lamas? :)

And are they good for bear defence? :D
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I think the OP meant "llama" in this case.

In the immortal words of Ogden Nash:

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.

To which Nash appended the footnote:

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known
as a three-alarmer. Pooh.​

Actually, some people keep a couple to protect sheep etc. against coyotes. One person up the road has one she named "Atilla the Hum" because sometimes they make a curious humming sound. When alarmed, however, they bray. They're no match for a bear, though, as my next-door neighbour found out when one of her males decided to assert himself when a bear got into his part of the enclosure.

:) Stuart
 
As long as the bear has a food source he isn't going anywhere. Anything you do short of killing him is only a short term solution, and he'll be back once his belly tells him its time. You can try nail boards, a cracker shell pistol, and/or an electric fence, but in the end, the compost has to go. The neighborhood dogs will get impaled on the nails, the cracker shells will wake up the neighborhood at 4 am, and you'll light up some kid with the fence, so you'll be a popular guy.
 
Electric fence attached to garbage can wakes them up pretty good. There are bee hives up here that have 2 strands of electric fence around them and they are never hit, by bears.
 
grj13 said:
a friend of mine got bit by a llama, 57 stitches on his arm. Apparently the males have fighting teeth.
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A 75 year-old woman was recently attacked and trampled by one here in B.C. CBC link here

A bizarre attack by a llama has turned a summer vacation in B.C. into a harrowing ordeal for a 75-year-old woman from Montreal.

France Pilotte was on a family outing to a petting zoo at Krause Berry Farms in Langley, east of Vancouver, July 28 and said she was attacked by the animals they'd gone to see.

"It's like a nightmares," said Pilotte, who spoke publicly about the incident for the first time Friday.

Pilotte said she, her daughter and her grandson were feeding grain to goats and a llama when the unimaginable happened.

"The big thing jump on me and push me down so fast I jump in the air. I fell so hard. It's unbelievable," said Pilotte.

The "big thing" was the llama.

Pilotte's daughter, Sandy Philpott, said she and the grandson were not hurt, but they were traumatized by what they witnessed.

"Awake or asleep, all I see is a llama pouncing on my mother, who I love, and her bones crushing and shattering and her screams of pain," Philpott said.

The other animals also became a problem during the incident, Pilotte said.

"After that, two goats were walking on me. They were on me. Staying on me."

Pilotte suffered numerous fractures. Plates, metal rods and pins have been inserted in her broken femur, hip, elbow and arm.

She also must undergo surgery to mend her broken knee.

Llamas are usually gentle animals, but there can be execptions, an expert says. Llamas are usually gentle animals, but there can be execptions, an expert says. Pilotte is expected to spend the next several weeks recovering in hospital.

Llamas are domesticated South American beasts of burden generally considered to be gentle.

But, like many animals, they're susceptible to a condition called "berserk male syndrome," said Trudy Handel of Xanadu Farms in Langley, home to several llamas.

"If you take the baby away from the mother when it's very, very young and you bottle feed it and you keep it away from its own kind, it tries to relate to you as the herd," Handel said. "And in doing that, you're either there to breed or you're there to drive away."
Farm insured, says owner

Krause Berry Farm has been in business for nearly 40 years and opened its petting zoo three years ago.

In a telephone interview with CBC News, owner Alf Krause said the llama involved in the incident is not full-grown.

Krause said whatever occurred to Pilotte was an accident, and the farm has insurance to cover such contingencies.

Pilotte's daughter said the family has hired a lawyer.

"There's no guarantee she's going to survive this, considering her age and the risk of infection and her need for another surgery," said Philpott.
Click to expand...

I think this is indeed very unusual. I've been around my neighbour's llamas (and alpacas) for several years and only one or two have ever been aggressive. One, a female who used to be very affectionate when she was young, has become very aggressive and once tried to knock me down but now I carry a length of plastic conduit to fend her off. But she's the exception and the only one I have to watch out for. Mostly they are very curious and will either come up to you and sometimes nuzzle you or just run away. One of them routinely jumps a 5' fence to get the new grass (he's full-grown and about 6' tall) but you can't get anywhere near him- he just runs away. They couldn't catch him for shearing last time.

:) Stuart
 
Slingshot with ballbearings is a good way to harass the bear from a distance.

Also write a letter to the CO head office and advise them that you have problem bear and you are placing them on offical notice of this and you have concerns someone will be attacked. Keep a copy of the letter and any responses. If an attack does happen send letter to the newspaper and the family of the person attacked.
 
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